The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to audible messages, and more particularly to a methods and systems for providing audible notifications for medical devices.
In medical environments, especially complex medical environments where multiple patients may be monitored for multiple medical conditions, standardization of alarms and/or warnings creates significant potential for confusion and inefficiency on the part of users (e.g., clinicians or patients) in responding to specific messages. For example, it is sometimes difficult for clinicians and/or users of medical devices to distinguish or quickly identify the source and condition of a particular audible alarm or warning. Accordingly, the effectiveness and efficiency with which users respond to medical messaging can be adversely affected, which can lead to delays to responding to medical or system conditions associated with these audible alarms or warnings.
In particular, medical facilities typically include rooms to enable surgery to be performed on a patient, to enable a patient's medical condition to be monitored, and/or to enable a patient to be diagnosed. At least some of these rooms include multiple medical devices that enable the clinician to perform the operation, monitoring, and/or diagnosis. During operation of these medical devices, at least some of the devices are configured to emit audible indications, such as audible alarms and/or warnings that are utilized to inform the clinician of a medical condition being monitored. For example, a heart monitor and a ventilator may be attached to a patient. When a medical condition arises, such as low heart rate or low respiration rate, the heart monitor or ventilator emits an audible indication that alerts and prompts the clinician to perform some action.
Under certain conditions or in certain medical environments, multiple medical devices may concurrently generate audible indications. In some instances, two different medical devices may generate the same audible indication or an indistinguishably similar audible indication. For example, the heart monitor and the ventilator may both generate a similar high-frequency sound when an urgent condition is detected with the patient, which is output as the audible indication. Therefore, under certain conditions, the clinician may not be able to distinguish whether the alarm condition is being generated by the heart monitor or the ventilator. In this case, the clinician visually observes each medical device to determine which medical device is generating the audible indication. Moreover, when three, four, or more medical devices are being utilized, it is often difficult for the clinician to easily determine which medical device is currently generating the audible indication. Thus, delay in taking action may result from the inability to distinguish the audible indications from the different devices. Additionally, in some instances the clinician is not able to associate the audible indication with a specific condition and accordingly must visually view the medical device to assess a course of action.
Moreover, in some instances, no alarms and/or warnings exist for certain conditions, which can result in adverse results, such as injury to patients. For example, movement of major parts of medical equipment (e.g., CT/MR table and cradle, interventional system table/C-arm, etc.) is known for creating a potential for pinch points and collisions. In the majority of these cases, the only indication for these movements, especially for users not controlling the movements and for the patients is direct visual contact, which is not always possible.